262 PHILOSOPHY 



world discloses itself to us as a qualitative process of 

 continuous change, unfolding itself after the manner of 

 our innermost psychological life of which the very 

 essence is time. Closely associated with this same ten- 

 dency, though basing their conclusions more directly on a 

 critical examination of the methods and results of science, 

 are the three mathematicians, the late Henri POINCARE, 

 Gaston MILHAUD, and Edouard LsRoY. Milhaud and 

 LeRoy have recently entered the ranks of professional 

 philosophers. 



In sharp contrast to this spiritualistic tendency in 

 French thought is the current which is characterized, on 

 the one hand, by the attempt to make the study of social 

 relations the starting point for the solution of all philo- 

 sophical problems; and, on the other hand, by its method, 

 called Positivistic, which maintains that explanation 

 consists in stating as accurately as possible the constant 

 relations which are observed to hold between our sense- 

 impressions, elimination having been made of all theories, 

 hypotheses, or other intellectual interpretations. SAINT- 

 SIMON in his "Reorganisation de la societe europeenne" 

 and numerous other works emphasized the first phase of 

 the movement. His pupil, Auguste COMTE, added to it 

 the method, and thus became the founder of Positivism. 

 The systematic application of this method to social re- 

 lations in his great work, " Cours de philosophic positive," 

 entitles Comte to the honor of founding the strict science of 

 Sociology. The dominant idea in his doctrine of the classi- 

 fication of the sciences - - that the sciences are arranged in 

 a hierarchy of increasing complexity passing from mathe- 

 matics to sociology, and that the subject matter of no 

 science is reducible to the laws and principles of another 

 has become almost an axiom of subsequent thought. 



If the positivistic method be interpreted broadly as a 

 distrust of all metaphysics and as a demand to keep to 



